Week 2 Super Mario Bros

Though the game Super Mario Bros is way beyond my time, Mario Bros is still indeed one of the most classic figures that everyone will remember. Playing Super Mario Bros 1 kinda brought me back to my childhood while only pixel games could run on the cell phone or be accessed online.

While going back time, I was really fascinated by the dynamic relationship between the main character’s size and speed. When Mario eats a yellow mushroom (?), he will become bigger and consequently slower. For beginners, sure they will take everything that’s falling from the brick or popping up on the screen, but for experienced users, I suppose there must be a decision making behind it. Bigger or faster? That’s a hard question for me. A bigger size enables the player to kill the enemy faster and jump easier. At the same time, a faster speed can guarantee the player’s flexibility and lead to fewer misactions. This kind of decision making in the game is not rare in the previous games. There is a whole genre of decision-making games. What’s really new and intriguing about this is that the decision-making process is featured in a game like Super Mario Bros. The decision-making in the first level helps the player to get familiar with such choices in the entire game and better prepare them to face similar conditions going on with the game.